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[Exclusive] How to Shoot a 'True Detective' Gunfight

Step one: Watch footage of real police battles. A lot of them.
HBO/Lacey Terrell

This post contains spoilers for True Detective Season 2.

For fans of True Detective, what sets the show apart is the gritty atmosphere, the unshakable feeling that creator Nic Pizzolatto's world is a living, breathing organism. Nigel Bluck, the cinematographer who shot every bare knuckle brawl, burning bar, and brooding bender of True Detective Season 2, describes that feeling as something called a "psychosphere" or "psychospace": "It's the psychology of what's going on between the words. Nic's interested in the story, of course, but I think he's more interested in people, and how they interact, how they brush up against the world. That's why I'm so interested in what Nic does, because I like to photograph psychospace," Bluck explains to The Creators Project.

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The feeling of being inside a fucked-up complex character's head as they interact with a fucked-up, complex world is a huge part of True Detective's allure. And nowhere does the world seem more fucked up and complex than amid the chaos and bloody terror of a gun battle. Bluck has experience photographing both psychospheres in the South African small town drama, Ladygrey, and big gun battles in action-packed gangster flick, Son of a Gun, but he marries the two beautifully several times throughout Pizzolatto's grisly vision of Los Angeles.

From the bloody shootout that ramps up the adrenaline in episode four to the tragic confrontations that bring down Woodrugh and Velcoro, the art of shooting a True Detective battle is all about, well, the guns. "We always put the cameras by the guns. Close to the guns, close to the characters. We put the cameras in the line of fire," Bluck says. Where did he learn this technique? He watched a lot of Michael Mann movies.

Bluck elaborates on body counts and spills more secrets to concocting a shootout that will keep you up at night below:

HBO/Lacey Terrell

Visualize Everything

"A great photograph doesn't exist without a great visualization. There is no such thing as a great photograph by someone who just picks up a camera and goes, 'Oh, that's pretty.' Great photographers look at something, imagine it in their heads, then take the photograph. Whether you write it down or storyboard it, it's got to be there when you're describing it to your DP or your costume designer. You've got to have that visualization."

When in Doubt, Check the Internet

"Watch gunfights on YouTube. It's all there. Filmmakers couldn't do this five or ten years ago. You couldn't go on YouTube and look up the LA shootout and see it from six different angles of the same thing. That's what we looked at. It's sick, but that's where you get to see what actually goes down. And for me it's much more interesting to tell the truth of it, because it's a fucking horrendous thing, and it's really scary and chaotic, and everyone is just shitting themeselves. That's what you see on YouTube that you don't see in the movies."

Keep the Cameras by the Guns

"We had to figure out how to get the cameras as close to the guns as possible. We had to put the cameras inside the action to make it feel like we were there with the cops. rather than across the street, watching it unfold. We always put the cameras by the guns. Close to the guns, close to the characters. We put the cameras in the line of fire. I think that's what gives it its immediacy."

Have the Right Equipment

"We had a specific lens that we used to get inside the characters' heads, when the camera goes from observing the characters in the space to being right there, inches away from their eyes. And we would use it very sparingly."

HBO/Lacey Terrell

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Use Full Blanks

"When you're shooting a gun battle you can either use dummies, (which don't make a bang or any recoil) so the actor has to fake it. They basically walk around the street going, 'pew, pew, pew.' Or you can use half loads (a blank with half the explosive in it), so you have half the recoil to get the timing right. It makes a pop with a little bit of smoke. Or you use full loads, which are basically the bullet, without the bullet. Those are pretty dangerous because you still have hot metal coming out of the gun, hot gunpowder coming out—but the pluses are it's the full noise, the gun is recoiling as it would in reality, the actor is working with a real gun that feels lethal, and you get the actual explosion and fireworks that you'd expect in a real fight. It's very hard to manufacture any other way. For me, that's what puts you in the middle of the chaos, which is what makes it scary."

Keep It Safe

"There's a lot of bystanders, a lot of people around, so the main thing was keeping it safe. There are very specific rules about how close the camera can be to the gun, but there's ways of working around that with protective equipment and clothing, teaching the actor where to point the gun. Now that they're not just going 'pew, pew,' it's very precise. If they're going to point their gun to the left of the camera and fire, then swing the gun past my face to the other side of the camera to take the next shot, I've got to trust that they're not just going to unload halfway through in the heat of the moment."

Don't Show Your Hand

"Make a point to not feel the filmmaker's hand. Just let the scene play out as it should. Make sure the camera is where it should be at crucial moments, and block the scene around that. The idea I try to fight is that classic cinematic formula: the wide shot, mid shot, then the close up. For me, I feel the hand of the filmmaker every time. I feel like I'm being extorted, or told where to look or how to feel. 'Look in her eyes now,' etc. What we're trying to do is let the character come to the camera when the moment is right, not make the camera come to the character. That way the action feels more natural."

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Trust Your Actors

"[In the underground shootout], once Paul breaks and runs, the camera's with him the whole time. It's just right there with him for those split-second decisions he has before he makes decisions like whether to maim or kill. And Taylor knows how to maximize those seconds.

"The other way to do it would be to see him wide, running through a room and then cut to the action. When I do that, we feel the hand, we feel the cut. But if we're with him, we don't feel the cut—it feels seamless, it feels real."

Be Adaptable

"I didn't read episode eight until we'd started shooting episode seven. That's an interesting thing about shooting television instead of movies is that a movie you know the whole thing when you set out and you know the entirety of it. With this, we're rock and rolling and expecting it to change as we go along. It's exciting to work with."

Be Excited

"When it feels exciting with the camera, it will be exciting in the screening room."

HBO/Lacey Terrell

See more of Nigel Bluck's work on his website. Season 2 of True Detective is available on HBO and HBO GO.

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